Louis Campagna

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Louis "Little New York" Campagna (1900-1955) was a New York mobster and a high ranking member of the Chicago Outfit for over three decades.

A member of New York's Five Points Gang during his teenage years, Campagna was brought to Chicago by fellow former Five Pointer Al Capone as a bodyguard and proved a valuable gunman during the gang war with the North Side Gang. A close associate of Capone, Campagna reportedly slept on a cot outside Capone's suite of rooms at the Lexington Hotel, who was armed and waiting for rival gangsters should they make it through at least fifty gunman standing guard in the lobby and lower floors.

Known for his reckless and unpredictable nature, Campagna was arrested by police as he attempted to storm a Chicago police station in an attempt to murder Joe Aiello who had been plotting Capone's death with North Side boss George Moran. As he was taken to a cell next to Aiello where a conversation was transcribed by a police officer fluent in Sicilian:

Campagna: "You're dead, dear friend, you're dead. You won't get to the end of the street still walking.

Aiello: "Can't we settle this ? Give me fourteen days and I'll sell my stores, my house and everything and quit Chicago for good. Can't we settle it ? Think of my wife and my baby."

Campagna: "You dirty rat ! You've broke faith with us twice now. You started this, we'll finish it."

Aiello was later killed, shot to death while leaven a North Kalmar Ave apartment, on October 28, 1930. During a later autopsy, a coroner reported removing 59 bullets weighing over a pound from Aiello's body.

Following Capone's conviction for tax evasion in 1931, Campagna remained with the Chicago syndicate eventually rising through the ranks as an extortionist and labor union racketeering under Paul "The Waiter" Ricca. Working with Willie Morris Bioff and George Browne in extorting millions from Hollywood studios during the late-1930s, Campagna was indicted in 1943 with much of the Chicago Outfit's leadership and sentenced to ten years imprisonment. However, released after three years, Campagna returned to running syndicate operations under Sam Giancana until retiring to his 800-acre Indiana residence in the early 1950s and died of a heart attack on his pleasure cruiser while sailing off Miami, Florida.

[edit] Further reading

Binder, John. The Chicago Outfit. Arcadia Publishing, 2003. ISBN 0-7385-2326-7
Giancana, Sam and Chuck. Double Cross: The Explosive, Inside Story of the Mobster Who Controlled America. New York: Warner Books, 1992. ISBN 0-446-51624-4
Kobler, John. Capone: The Life and Times of Al Capone. New York: Da Capo Press, 2003. ISBN 0-30681-285-1
Reppetto, Thomas A. American Mafia: A History of Its Rise to Power. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2004. ISBN 0-8050-7798-7
Schoenberg, Robert J. Mr. Capone. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1992. ISBN 0-68812-838-6

[edit] References

Sifakis, Carl. The Mafia Encyclopedia. New York: Da Capo Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8160-5694-3
Sifakis, Carl. The Encyclopedia of American Crime. New York: Facts on File Inc., 2001. ISBN 0-8160-4040-0